English Lands Letters and Kings Part 8

[Sidenote: London streets.]

A sharp walk of a quarter of an hour from St. Paul's would, in that time, take one into the green fields that lay in Islington; and beyond, upon the Waltham road, were the hedges, pikes, and quiet paddocks, through which went galloping--at a little later day--that citizen of "credit and renown," John Gilpin, instead of the clattering suburbs that now stretch nearly all the way between Cheapside and the "Bell" at Edmonton.

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Of the many bridges which now span the Thames, only two[2]

representatives were in existence; the old Westminster was there in its first freshness, and ferrymen quarrelling with it, because it spoiled their carrying trade to Vauxhall and parts adjacent; and the old London Bridge was c.u.mbered by lumbering houses, held up by trusses and cross-beams, while its openings were so low and its piers so many as to make, at certain stages of the tide, furious cascades which drove great wheels geared to c.u.mbrous pumping machinery, to throw up water for the behoof of London citizens. The old Fleet Prison was in existence, and its smudgy stifling air hung over all that low region above which now leap the great arches of the Holborn Viaduct; and round the corner, in the reek and smoke of Fleet Street, half way between the spire of St.

Bride's and the spire of St. Clement's Danes--up a grimy court that is, very likely, just as grimy to-day, lived that Leviathan of a man, Dr.

Samuel Johnson.

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_Johnson and Ra.s.selas._

[Sidenote: Ra.s.selas.]

He had pa.s.sed through his green days, and the nights when he strolled supperless about London with that poor wretch of a poet Richard Savage.

The school at Edial with its three pupils was well behind him; so was the dining behind the screen at Cave's (the bookseller who presided over the _Gentleman's Magazine_, with St. John's Gate on the cover then, and on the cover now): so was his age of sentiment ended.

His wife Tetty had gone the way of all flesh (1752) and he had mourned her truly: in proof of this may be counted the presence under his roof of a certain old lady, Miss Williams, who is peevish, who is tempestuous, who is blind, who tests the tea with her fingers, who _will_ talk, and then again, she _won't_ talk; yet Johnson befriends her, pensions her--when he has money,--sends home sweetbreads from the tavern for her; and when his friends ask why he tolerates this vixen, he gives the soundest reason that he has--"she {105} was a friend of Tetty; she was with poor Tetty when she died!"

And his brain was as big, or bigger, than his heart; it had made itself felt all over England by long, honest work--by brave, loud speech. He had snubbed the elegant Lord Chesterfield, who would have liked to see his name upon the first page of the great Dictionary. Not an outcast of the neighborhood but had heard of his audacious kindness; not a linkboy but knew him by the c.h.i.n.k of his half-pence; not a beggar but had been bettered by his generous dole; not a watchman but knew him by his unwieldy hulk, and his awkward, intrepid walk; and we know him--if we know him at all--not by his _Rambler_ and his _Ra.s.selas_, so much as by the story of his life. Who rates _Ra.s.selas_ among his or her cherished books of fiction?

What an unlikely, and what a ponderous beginning it has!

"Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow, attend to the history of Ra.s.selas, Prince of Abyssinia!"

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When, in days long past, I have read thus far in this elephantine novelette to my children, they were pretty apt to explode upon me with--"Please try something else!" Yet this elephantine novelette has a host of excellent and eloquent moral reflections in it, shouldering and elbowing themselves out from its flimsy dress of fiction. Shall I give a hint of the scheme of this old story? An Abyssinian prince living in the middle of a happy valley, walled in by mountains that are beautiful, and watered by rivers that are musical, in the enjoyment of all luxuries, does at last become restless--as so many people do--not so much from a want, as from the want of a want. So he conspires with Imlac, a poet, to escape from the thraldom of complete ease: a sister of the prince and her handmaid steal away with them; and with plenty of jewels the party enter upon their exploration of the ways of outside life. They encounter hermits whose solitude does not cure their pains, and shepherds whose simplicities do not conquer misfortune, and philosophers whose philosophy does not relieve their anxieties, and scholars whose learning does not make them happy.

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Imlac, the poet, sums up their findings in saying--"You will rarely meet one who does not think the lot of his neighbor better than his own." This is its whole philosophy. There are interlarded discourses upon learning, and marriage, and death, and riches, which might have been cut from a _Rambler_ or from a sermon. They travel through upper Egypt, and sojourn in the grand Cairo; but there is no s.h.i.+mmer of the desert, and no flash of crescent or scimitar, and no dreamy orientalism; its Eastern sages talk as if they might have thundered their ponderous sentences from the pulpit of St. Bride's. As a finality--if the tale can be said to have any finality--the princess thinks she would like--of all things--Knowledge: the poor handmaid, who has had her little adventure, by being captured by a Bedouin chief, thinks she would like best a convent on some oasis in the desert; while the prince would like a miniature kingdom whose rule he might administer with justice as easily as one might wind a watch; but all agree that, when the Nile flood favors, they will go contentedly back to the happy valley from which they set out upon their {108} wanderings. It is interesting to know that the story was written by Dr. Johnson on the evenings of a single week; and written--before he had come to his pension[3]--to defray the expenses of his mother's funeral; and it is interesting further to know that the magniloquent tale did forge its way into the front rank of readers at a time when _Roderick Random_ and _Tom Jones_ were comparatively fresh books, and only five years after Mr. Richardson had issued from his book-shop under the shadows of St. Bride's, hardly a gunshot away from the house of Johnson, the voluminous history of _Sir Charles Grandison_.

_The Painter and the Club._

[Sidenote: Sir Joshua Reynolds.]

Among the friends the Doctor made in those days of _Ramblers_ and _Idlers_ was one Joshua Reynolds,[4] some fourteen years the junior of the Doctor, but sedate and thoughtful beyond his age; with an eye, too, for the beautiful faces of young {109} English girls which had never been opened on them before; and doing artist work that is quite different in quality and motive from that of the old stand-by Mr.

Hogarth, who not long before this time had been preaching his painted sermons of the _Rake's Progress_.

Reynolds had made his trip to Italy, and had brought back from Rome, in addition to his studies of Raphael--an affection of the ear--caught, as he always said, in the draughty corridors of the Vatican, which obliged him ever after to carry an ear-trumpet; but his courtesy and grace and precision of speech made the awkwardness forgotten. Looking at the exquisite child's face of his little Penelope Boothby, expressing all that was most winning in girlhood for him who was so reverent of exterior graces, and looking from this to the leathern, seamy face of Johnson, and his unlaundered linen, and snuffy frills (when he wore any), and it is hard to understand the intimacy of these two men; but there was a tenderness of soul under the Doctor's slouchy ways which the keen painter recognized; and in the painter there was a resolute intellection, which Johnson was not slow to {110} detect, and which presently--when the new Royal Academy was founded by George III.--was to have expression in the great painter's discourses on Art--discourses which for their courageous common-sense will, I think, outrank much of the art-writing of to-day.

[Sidenote: Turks-Head Club.]

In 1760 (the year after _Ra.s.selas_ appeared) Reynolds moved into a fine house, for that day, in Leicester Square--a quarter now given over mostly to French lodgers; but in its neighborhood one may find a marble bust of the eminent painter; and the house where he gave great steaming dinners--famous for their profusion and disorderly array--is still there, though given over to small artists and sellers of bric-a-brac.

His good sister, Miss f.a.n.n.y, who was his housekeeper, loved painting and poetry, and a drive in the painter's chariot, which he set up in later days, better than she loved housewifery. Over-shrewd ones said that Sir Joshua (the t.i.tle came to him a few years after with the presidency of the Royal Academy) did not marry because he had wholesome dread of a wife's extravagance; certain it is that he remained a bachelor all his life, and {111} thereby was a fitting person to discuss with the widowed Johnson the formation of a club. The Doctor was always clubably disposed; so he caught at the idea of Sir Joshua, and thence sprung that society--called "The Literary Club" afterward, which held its sessions, first at the Turk's Head, in Gerrard Street, Soho Square--on Monday evenings at the start, and afterward on Fridays--numbering among its early members Johnson, Burke, Reynolds, Hawkins, Beauclerk, and Goldsmith. This famous club, though moving from place to place in the closing years of the last century, still preserved its ident.i.ty; it took a new lease of life in the first quarter of the present century, and it still survives in a very quiet old age, holding its fortnightly meetings--rather sparingly attended, it is true--at Willis's Rooms, St. James's Street, in the west of London. Among recent members may be named Gladstone, Sir Frederick Leighton, Lord Salisbury, the Duke of Argyle, Tennyson, and Matthew Arnold.[5]

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_Some Old Club-men._

[Sidenote: Edmund Burke.]

Burke,[6] who was among the original nine members, was very much the junior of Johnson; but known to him as a sometime Irish student at law, who had written only a few years before two brilliant treatises; one on _Natural Society_, and the other on the _Sublime and Beautiful_.

Later he had done excellent historic work in connection with _Dodsley's Annual Register_; but he had not yet entered upon that sea of political turmoil over which he was to sweep in so grand a way and with such blaze of triumph. It is possible indeed that he was indebted to the a.s.sociations of the club for some of the initiative steps toward that wonderful career whose outcome in Parliament, in the courts, and in pamphleteering, has become a component part of the {113} literature of England. Burke, even at that early stage of his progress (his first speech was made in 1766) had all his vast resources at ready command; Johnson did not wish to meet him in debate without warning; true he was afraid of no mere eloquence; he was used to puncturing bloat of that sort; but Burke's most fiery speeches were beaded throughout with globules of thought, which must be grasped and squelched one by one, if mastery were sought. He was impetuous, too, and aggressive, but reverent of the superior age and reputation of the Doctor; and I daresay coyly avoided those American questions which later came to the front, and upon which they held views diametrically opposed. In after years it used to be said that Burke's speeches would empty the benches of the Commons--ye philosophized; and when not heated, spoke with a drawling utterance and a touch of Irish brogue flavoring his voice; indeed he talked so well he was never tired of talking; his sentences so swelled out under the amplitude of his ill.u.s.trations and allusions that I think he came at last to take a pride in their very longitude, and trailed his gorgeous convolutions of {114} speech with the delighted eagerness with which a fine woman trails her sheen of satins and velvets.

[Sidenote: Topham Beauclerk.]

Dr. Nugent, a physician of culture, father-in-law of Mr. Burke, was also one of the original members of the club--getting the preferment--as so many in all times do get preferment--simply because son-in-law, father-in-law, or nephew--to somebody else. Another noticeable member of the club was Topham Beauclerk, not by any means the man a casual observer would have taken for an a.s.sociate of Johnson.

He was courtly and elegant in bearing, a man of fas.h.i.+on, smiled upon by such as Lord Chesterfield and Horace Walpole, and who traced his descent back through the first Duke of St. Albans to Nell Gwynne and Charles the Second. He inherited by right, therefore, gayety and humor and wit, and rare histrionic power, and Satan-ry to match. Old Dr.

Johnson fairly languished in his admiration of the way in which Topham Beauclerk could tell a story. "It costs me fearful pains," he was used to say; "but this fellow trips through with an airy grace that costs him nothing."

Beauclerk was proud of his members.h.i.+p, and {115} brought his own share of wit, of general information, and of cheery _bonhomie_ to the common reckoning. He married a certain well-known and much-admired Lady Diana Bolingbroke--a divorcee of two days' standing--and treated her shamefully; that being the proper thing for a fas.h.i.+onable man to do, who was emulous of the domestic virtues of George II. At his death, with a large jointure in hand, she had peace; and Burke said, with a humor that was uncommon to him: "It was really enlivening to behold her placed in that sweet house, released from all her cares: 1,000 per annum at her disposal, and her husband dead! It was pleasant, it was delightful, to see her enjoyment of the situation!" Beauclerk was too fine a fellow to think well of the domesticities; there was a good deal of the blood of Charles the Second in him. Over and over we come upon such--men of parts squandered in the small interchanges of fas.h.i.+onable life; perpetually saying slight, good things for a dinner-table; telling a story with rare gusto; the envy of heavy talkers who can never catch b.u.t.terflies on the wing; looking down upon serious duty whether in art or {116} letters; and so, leaving nothing behind them but a pretty and not always delicate perfume.

[Sidenote: David Garrick.]

Another of the clubmen was David Garrick--not one of the original nine, but voted in a few years after. Dr. Johnson does indeed give a characteristic growl when his name is proposed--"What do we want of play-actors?" but his good nature triumphs. Little Garrick was an old scholar of his at Edial; and though he has conquered all theatric arts and won all their prizes, he is still for him, "little Garrick." A taste for splendor and dress had always belonged to him. In his boy-days he had written to his father, who was stationed at Gibraltar, "I hope, Papa, you find velvet cheap there; for some one has given me a knee-buckle, and it would go capitally with velvet breeches. Amen, and so be it!"

That love for the buckles and the velvet clung to him. When Edial school broke up, he tramped with Johnson to London--the master with the poor tragedy of _Irene_ in his pocket, and the boy with such gewgaws and pence as he could rake together. Perhaps, also, the tragic splendor of Shakespeare's verse s.h.i.+mmering mistily across his {117} visions of the future, making his finger-ends tingle and his pulse beat high.

But a legacy of 1,000 comes to the Garrick lad presently, which he invests in a wine business, in company with his staid brother, Peter Garrick, who looks after affairs in Lichfield, and who is terribly disturbed when he hears that David is taking to theatric studies;--has acted parts even!

And Davy writes back relenting, and sorry to grieve them at home; but keeps at his parts. And Peter writes more and more disconsolately, lamenting this great reproach, and David writes pretty letters of fence, and the wine business leaks away, and Peter is in despair; and Davy sends remittances which are certainly not legitimate business dividends, thus propping up the sinking wine venture; and before Peter is reconciled, has become the hero of the London boards, with a bank credit that would buy all their ports and clarets twice over.

And this wonderful histrionic genius, probably unparalleled on the English stage before or since his day, so gay, so brisk--so witty betimes--so capable of a song or a fandango, brought life to the {118} club. Nor was there lack in him of literary qualities; his prologues were of the best, and he had the charming art of listening provocatively when the great doctor expounded.

_Mr. Boswell._

[Sidenote: James Boswell.]

Another early member of the club, whom I think we should have liked to see making his way with a very a.s.sured step into the Turk's Head, of a Monday or a Friday, was James Boswell, Esquire.[7] It is a household name now, and will remain so for years to come by reason of the extraordinary life which he wrote, of his master and patron, Dr.

Johnson. Yet it was only a year or so before the formation of the club that this jaunty Scotch gentleman, son of a laird, and of vast a.s.surance--having been a tuft-hunter from his youth--caught his first sight of the great Doctor, in the little shop of Davies the bookseller; and the great man had given a snubbing, then and there, to the pert, but always obsequious Boswell; the future biographer, however, digested {119} excellently well provision of that sort, and I think the Doctor had always a tenderness for those who took his flagellations without complaint. Certain it is that there grew up thereafter an intimacy between the two, which is one of the most curious things in the history of English Men of Letters. I know that hard things are said of Mr.

Boswell, and that every tyro in criticism loves to have a blow at the well-fed arrogance of the man. Macaulay has specially given him a grievous black-eye; but Macaulay--particularly in those early review papers--was apt to let his exuberant and c.u.mulative rhetoric carry him up to a climacteric which the ladder of his facts would scantly reach.

To be sure Boswell was a toady; but rather from veneration of those he wors.h.i.+pped than desire of personal advancement; he was an arrant tuft-hunter, thereby enlarging the sphere of his observations; but he was fairly up in cla.s.sical studies; had large fund of information; was sufficiently well-bred (indeed, in contrast with the Doctor, I think we may say excellently well-bred); he rarely, if ever, said malicious things, though often impertinent ones; {120} his conundrums again and again gave a new turn to dull talk; and he had a way, which some even more stolid people possess in our time, of _baiting_ conversation by interposing irrelevant matter, with an air of innocence that captivates; then there was the pleasant conceit of the man--full-fed, sleek, and s.h.i.+ning out all over him--over his face, and his erect but somewhat paunchy figure; all which qualities were contributory to the humor and fulness and charm of that famous biography which we can read backward or forward--in the morning or at night--by the chapter or by the page--with our pipe or without it--with our knitting or without it--and always with an amazed and delighted sense that the dear, old, clumsy, gray-stockinged, snuff-ridden Doctor has come to life once more, and is toddling along our streets, belching out his wit and wrath, and leaning on the arm of the ever-ready and most excellent and obsequious James Boswell, Esquire.

Such a book is not to be sneered at, nor the writer of it; perhaps we think it would be easy for us or anybody to write such another, if we {121} would only forget conventionalisms and have the courage of our impressions; but if we made trial, I daresay we should find that to forget conventionalisms is just what we can't and do not know how to do; and so our impressions get bundled into the swathings of an ambitious rhetoric which spoils our chances and vulgarizes effort. I do not say Boswell was a very high-toned man or a very capable man in most directions; but he did have the art of easy narrative to a most uncommon degree; and did clearly perceive and apprehend just those points and qualities which go to make portraiture complete and satisfying.[8] I do not believe that he stupidly blundered into doing his biographic work well; stupid {122} blundering never did and never could accomplish work that will meet acceptance by the intelligence of the world.

_Gibbon._